This movie deconstructs
the hard-boiled detective, starting with her red corpuscles. How long
will Inspector Lindsay Boxer (Tracy Pollan) live with a rare blood disease?
Six months, maybe. With this deadline rushing her endgame, priorities
jam for first place in her downsized calendar.

Mad passionate love knocks on her door in the character of Captain Christopher
Raleigh (Gil Bellows). As her closest confident (Pam Grier) tells her:
"Oh, he is fine, fine, fine, fine, fine!" If bold brown eyes and public
relations talent hold the keys to her heart, our heroine should be on
Cloud Nine. Who can guarantee that this knight in shining armor would
find her, given fifty years or more?

Friendship offers
to hold her hand -- and provide medical referrals, too. In this manner,
the Women's Murder Club begins in this made-for-TV movie. Her professional
colleagues ostensibly collaborate on solving mysteries. Their overall
function remains supplying the support of an extended family. To one member
only, Boxer commits her deadly timeframe. Whose death they investigate
becomes an open question.

To keep our heroine
on her toes, two villains enter the scene: an intrepid journalist (Carly
Pope) and an even more intrepid novelist (Robert Patrick). The former
shadows Boxer for the ultimate prize -- uncovering the identity of the
Bride and Groom Serial Killer. The latter writes the story before it happens,
turning lives into leads.

The journalist keeps
bungling into crime scenes. She looks for stories, but remains blind to
assaults waged beneath the skin. Professionalism turns both crusaders
into actresses. If these characters compete for the title of "hard-boiled,"
though, the newspaper reporter wins. To complete her assignments, she
becomes ally or alky in a New York Times heartbeat.

To her credit, Little
Miss Oscar stays far away from the most dangerous character of all --
Mr. World Famous Novelist. Tipping its hat to Stephen King, the script
suggests that this writer means to compete with the creator of Carrie
(1976), The Shining (1980) Cujo (1983), Misery
(1990), and Dreamcatcher (2003). This challenger never saw
The Dark Half (1993), though; he just doesn't grasp how
the Master buries his competition.

Our heroine earns
respect here by never saying "Die." As the referee standing between fiction
and nonfiction, she toes a fine line. Writers from both realms tempt her,
threaten her and stalk her. She not only supplies their material -- she
becomes it. So the movie explores the territory of Six Characters
in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello. Only here, one character
contests the right to the last word

Engrossed in killings,
our heroine forgets her own fate. Do murder mysteries thus rescue us from
fear and self-centeredness? Like a cat with nine lives, this film piles
on alternative endings. All of them distract everyone from hospitals and
insurance. For the best six months of one woman's life, see this movie
-- and pick your poison.